“The Arctic did not experience the meltdowns forecast by NSIDC and the Norwegian Polar Year Secretariat. It didn't even come close. Additionally, some current graphs and press releases from NSIDC seem less than conservative. There appears to be a consistent pattern of overstatement related to Arctic ice loss.”

Today, Goddard is retracting the claim:

“… it is clear that the NSIDC graph is correct, and that 2008 Arctic ice is barely 10% above last year - just as NSIDC had stated.”

Here’s another installment about the silliness of “global warming” as posited by politicians and “environmentalists”.

Cooking the Books to Cook the Ice

Global Warming is about global government and depopulation

Unless Goddard, or intrepid DeSmog readers, have the time to go out and urge bloggers to correct this latest misinformation, it will be popping up as yet another false piece of information on the true state of our planet and the realities of global warming for some time to come. And as the old adage goes , “If you repeat something long enough it eventually becomes true.”

Previous Comments

Re: Re: Re: Must reads, it IS starting to fall apart
“The whole idea of being skeptical is that you CANBE wrong! Can you!”

Ug! You just don’t get it! Yes, I might be wrong. What would be the consequences of that? YOU might be wrong, too. What would be the consequences of THAT?

I’ve built that possibility into my decisions and advocacy. You appear to have not.

THAT is why I will harbor deep and bitter resentment to you and your kind if the carbon hits the fan–because you bet the whole ball of wax (including me and my kids) on your confidence. What am I betting on my confidence? Economic harm. Not comparable.

I keep writing more, and then erasing it, because I’ve realized that your debating consists of countering a few tangential points, which gives you the appearance of countering my argument, while ignoring the central point.

So here’s the central point: what if you’re wrong? When the stakes are so high, surely it is prudent to build that possibility into your decision.

As I repeatedly pointed out to him, first he must show that the radical extreme alarmist position has any validity to it at all. Yet he never, and no one has yet, presented ANY evidence that such alarmist predictions will come true. Does anyone? Nope. That’s why more and more scientists are coming forward denouncing the radical alarmist predictions.

Steep decline in oil production
Interesting that you blame global warming hysteria for the demise of the world.

What were you doing to campaign FOR awareness and action on PO that was at all comparable to your campaign AGAINSTAGW?

That’s why I don’t buy your story that you’re against AGW because it steals the show from PO. The imbalance between the effort you take to discredit AGW and the effort you take to educate people about PO instead makes it obvious that you are dogmatically against AGW for some other reason. It’s quite clear the reason is a bias against government, as I covered in my video series (particularly “Get What You Want,” and “No Holds Barred”), and tipped off by your featured statement “Don’t you know that the AGW spin is nothing more than a socialist/communist attempt to take over the world? They are playing you!”

I hope for your sake that you have enough self-awareness to recognize that before you are irrecoverably lumped in with the Holocaust Deniers and Moon Hoaxers. Because that’s about where you’ve put yourself now.

Notice the attempt to insult people at the end. Common tactic used by dogmatists who cannot defend their position and uncomfortable being questioned on that dogma.

No change in global temps according to 2 different satilite measurments since 2000. How many more years of flat or downturn in global temps will it take before you realize that AGW may not be from us at all? 5 years, 10 years? Or next year?

BTW, come April is a report coming on polar bears in the arctic. You won’t like the outcome. only 2 of the 17 populations are in decline, the rest are stable or growing. The population has recovered from a low of 10,000 in the 1950’s to 25,000+ today. At least one of the two declines is due to over hunting. Polar bears survived the last warm trend during the medeval warm period, they will survive this one, unless they are all hunted.

It had some grammar and spelling problems, and a link to a denialist blog, plus some really dumb statements.

Polar bears survived the MWP? Do you have any evidence that they experienced the MWP? The MWP took place in Europe; so are there any polar bears in Europe today? Did the MWP melt all the Arctic ice?

(Edited to remove an insult) The reason you get insulted in these arguments is that you make dumb statements and when people show you what is wrong with them, you ignore them. You think your opinion is as good as any one else’s; but it is not because you don’t know what you are talking about and you are not willing to learn.

The MWP was world wide. www.co2science.org. Lots of peer reviewed papers shows it was. Recall that there were no people in NA at the time who wrote a history of their weather. So just because there are written records in Europe does not mean it was just in Europe.

And I don’t need to edit out insults. The only people who throw insults are dogmatists who do not like being challenged.

so show me the proxies for North America & Australia & Antarctica & South Africa & Indonesia &c &c &c that support the notion that the MWP was global. I’m open to argument, but I have seen nothing – NOTHING – to support this. Fern Mackenzie

Interesting you ask this. There is no faslification of a skeptic position. Theories are falsifiable, not one’s skeptical view of a theory. The onus is on those presenting the theory to provice evidence for it, not those who are skeptical to provide negative evidence. Skepticism is not a theory, hence is not subject to be falsified.

What would make me switch to accept the theory, not the dogma? Sea level accelarating for one. The models predicting the future would be second. And the planet continuing to warm in step with CO2 increases would be third. Since none of those are happening I remain skeptical.

That’s a rather rude thing to say, but it’s true. The reason I say it is:
Accelerating sea level rise– “Church and White (2006) found a sea-level rise from January 1870 to December 2004 of 195 mm, a 20th century rate of sea-level rise of 1.7 ± 0.3 mm per yr and a significant acceleration of sea-level rise of 0.013 ± 0.006 mm per year.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise

Models predicting the future and planet continuing to warm with CO2 increases– “From 1984 to 2006, the trends in the two observational datasets are 0.24+/- 0.07 and 0.21 +/- 0.06 deg C/decade, where the error bars (2) are the derived from the linear fit. The ‘true’ error bars should be slightly larger given the uncertainty in the annual estimates themselves. For the model simulations, the trends are for Scenario A: 0.39+/-0.05 deg C/decade, Scenario B: 0.24+/- 0.06 deg C/decade and Scenario C: 0.24 +/- 0.05 deg C/decade.” http://tinyurl.com/29e53y

I may be mistaken, but I suspect you were skeptical back in 2006 when all three of your conditions were met? No matter, be skeptical if you like. Just put your skepticism to better use (ie, better than repeating talking points on websites).

Nine long and nearly continuous sea level records were chosen from around the world to explore rates of change in sea level for 1904–2003. These records were found to capture the variability found in a larger number of stations over the last half century studied previously. Extending the sea level record back over the entire century suggests that the high variability in the rates of sea level change observed over the past 20 years were not particularly unusual. The rate of sea level change was found to be larger in the early part of last century (2.03 ± 0.35 mm/yr 1904–1953), in comparison with the latter part (1.45 ± 0.34 mm/yr 1954–2003). The highest decadal rate of rise occurred in the decade centred on 1980 (5.31 mm/yr) with the lowest rate of rise occurring in the decade centred on 1964 (−1.49 mm/yr). Over the entire century the mean rate of change was 1.74 ± 0.16 mm/yr.

There is no accelaration in the rate of sea level. What we are seeing is normal decadal ups and downs in the rate.

If the alarmists were right the rate would have to be severl TIMES the current rate. In Gore’s case 30-40 TIMES the current rate. Not physically possible.

Realize that the IPCC has lowered their predictions every time, so that their lowest prediction is actually the last 100 years average of some 1.35mm/yr

Abstract: Mean-sea-level data from coastal tide gauges in the north Indian Ocean wereare used to show that low-frequency variability is consistent among the stations in the basin. Statistically significant trends obtained from records longer than 40 years yielded sea-level-rise estimates between 1.06–1.75 mm/ yrear-1 , with a regional average of 1.29 mm yr-1, when corrected for global isostatic adjustment (GIA) using model data, with a regional average of 1.29 mm-1.. These estimates are consistent with the 1–2 mm /year-1 global sea-level-rise estimates reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Church et al., 2001). http://drs.nio.org/drs/handle/2264/646

I questioned your position on AGW when research indicated sea level rise was accelerating and temperatures sat right on the projections of old models. You responded with a 2007 abstract that disagreed with previous results indicating acceleration, but used fewer data and arbitrary time blocks (dichotomized around 1950). Here’s the abstract of the paper the Wikipedia article cited ( http://tinyurl.com/6bb3sj ):

“Multi-century sea-level records and climate models indicate an acceleration of sea-level rise, but no 20th century acceleration has previously been detected. A reconstruction of global sea level using tide-gauge data from 1950 to 2000 indicates a larger rate of rise after 1993 and other periods of rapid sea-level rise but no significant acceleration over this period. Here, we extend the reconstruction of global mean sea level back to 1870 and find a sea-level rise from January 1870 to December 2004 of 195 mm, a 20th century rate of sea-level rise of 1.7 ± 0.3 mm yr−1 and a significant acceleration of sea-level rise of 0.013 ± 0.006 mm yr−2. This acceleration is an important confirmation of climate change simulations which show an acceleration not previously observed. If this acceleration remained constant then the 1990 to 2100 rise would range from 280 to 340 mm, consistent with projections in the IPCCTAR.”

Perhaps you can explain the relevance of your last quotation referencing Church 2001 in the abstract, compared to the more recent TAR which has a higher projection? Seems to me that your citation of Unnikrishnan and Shankar disproves the point you try to make.

It’s a good idea to ask people what they would find convincing enough to change their minds. It’s also a good idea to ask oneself. So here’s to everyone who asks with genuine interest and answers sincerely.

I tried this conversation with Gary a while ago but we didn’t get very far. JR, very briefly, here is my answer. In my own view, catastrophic AGW has three components:
(i) Increasing levels of CO2 enhance the greenhouse effect.
(ii) Other, unrelated effects on temperature will balance out over the next 100 or so years, such that greenhouse gas forcing will dominate changes to climate, resulting in warming.
(iii) Feedbacks including albedo and water vapour changes will also act to increase temperatures.

The most effective way to convince me that AGW is not a concern would be to knock down (i) or (ii), with the special requirement for (ii) that the other factors will result in a net cooling of global temperatures.

Now, I can’t claim that I’ll certainly be able to understand any potential analysis that demonstrates (i) or (ii) to have been knocked down. But hopefully others could. So I am forced to appeal to authority – if scientists in credible, peer-reviewed journals take (i) or (ii) to be knocked down, then I’ll stop advocating for a lower carbon future (er, if increased ocean acidity is shown not to be a problem).

“The most effective way to convince me that AGW is not a concern would be to knock down (i) or (ii), with the special requirement for (ii) that the other factors will result in a net cooling of global temperatures.”

Which is the case right now. Temps leveled off, and dropping last 10 year in spite of increasing CO2.

“Now, I can’t claim that I’ll certainly be able to understand any potential analysis that demonstrates (i) or (ii) to have been knocked down. But hopefully others could. So I am forced to appeal to authority – if scientists in credible, peer-reviewed journals take (i) or (ii) to be knocked down, then I’ll stop advocating for a lower carbon future (er, if increased ocean acidity is shown not to be a problem).”

What about credible scientists who do not accept AGW?
http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialreports/2007/globalwarming/SkepticalScientists.asp

400 of them. If you appeal to authority (which I NEVER do) then who are you going to side with? The majority? The majority have been wrong before (continental drift). Actually the majority are only assuming that the minority who actually promote AGW are correct. And that majority is erroding very fast. Soon the majority will be against AGW, will you swtich whenthat happens?

You appeal to authority all the time. So do I. I don’t use my own thermometer readings to understand changes in global temperatures. I rely on the authority of those who receive and interpret temperature measurements from around the world. To whose authority did you appeal in making your assertion that global temperatures dropped between the 1998 El Nino and the 2008 La Nina?

[Is your position so weak that you have to cherry pick those two years? You can go here: http://tinyurl.com/5emc2n
and count how many times a subsequent year was cooler than a previous year during any period where you agree temperatures were increasing. And didn’t you notice the part where I wrote about the next 100 or so years?]

If you read what I wrote, I said that I appeal to authority when there is something that I don’t have the knowledge or training to interpret and the authority obviously does. I wouldn’t go running to a fibber like Tim Ball for example (egad, what a list you provided!), who seems to have no more expertise than I do, to interpret something for me that I can already interpret well.

Will I switch when the majority of scientists … hmmm, I’m curious about what you will do when your prediction doesn’t come true. But I think I’ll have to say, yes, when the peer-reviewed, primary scientific literature has torn down the whole idea of AGW, I would be a nut to insist I knew better (despite having no formal training and not working much with the data), so I would change my mind. Excepting again that darned ocean acidification, about which there would also have to be some scientific refutation of the problem.

“I have no more faith in global climate model (GCM) predictions than I have in all those emails from Nigeria advising me that I have won the Lotto, or those proposals from rich widows in Dubai who have just lost their husbands, or from the less frequent emails from my bank asking for details of my banking account.
These GCMs are mathematical dinosaurs. Modern laptops are not only more efficient but they are more understandable. The public no longer have to rely on the edicts of the high priests with their questionable objectives and lack of real world knowledge and experiences.”

If they weren’t reliable, they wouldn’t be repeatable or corroborated.

Sadly, this isn’t the case:
http://www.desmogblog.com/this-is-not-a-hockey-stick

Maybe if McIntyre would get that stick out of his ass about MBH98/99 and actually mentioned the nearly-a-dozen other independent studies (several of which don’t use bristlecones or have any involvement from Mann) that reach the same conclusion, this talking point would die a peaceful death.

“With this new, and pretty much entirely arbitrary hurdle in place, Wahl and Amman were able to reject several of the runs which stood between the hockey stick and what they saw as its rightful place as the gold standard for climate reconstructions. That the statistical foundations on which they had built this paleoclimate castle were a swamp of misrepresentation, deceit and malfeasance was, to Wahl and Amman, an irrelevance. For political and public consumption, the hockey stick still lived, ready to guide political decision-making for years to come.”

I don’t mean a hand-drawn one. I mean, let’s see a reconstruction that AGW-deniers would agree, a priori, follows proper statistical procedures. It doesn’t affect whether or not increasing CO2 enhances the greenhouse effect, but Mann’s hockeystick (and independent reconstructions that show the same pattern) seem to be important to you. Why hasn’t McIntyre produced his own reconstruction and published it for others to study? I haven’t read much from him lately, but I think his positions on this are: (1) auditors validate and find mistakes, they don’t do other people’s work; (2) the proxies are too crappy to yield worthwhile reconstructions. The former is a poor excuse and the second can be shown by example. In the interest of advancing knowledge, he should do the best reconstruction he can and then put whatever kinds of error bars he can statistically justify around it.
I’d like an update if this is incorrect.

The question is, is the Mann et al, the “hockey team”, massaging the data to get what they want? Yes. It doesn’t matter what other researcher’s reconstructions are. The hockey stick graph started all this, and is still used by the Goricle in his $250,000 per night presentations.

It’s not the job of the skeptics to do the research. It’s the job of the researches to get their research right. McIntyre doesn’t have to provide any alternative. If you say the moon is made of cheeze, all I have to do it show that it is not, not the specific geology it actually is made of.

Will you commit to admitting that the hockey stick graph is at best wrong, or at worse a fraud?

JR, I don’t have a ton of time right now, so c’mon back later. But for the moment I can quickly say you are wrong.

Moon-cheese – you can’t say that it’s not made of cheese: to make the analogy fit, all you can say is that you’re not convinced by someone else’s evidence that it is. However, if the data are more consistent with the cheese hypothesis than with any competing hypothesis, folks are going to stick with cheese. To replace the cheese hypothesis, you need to do more than show doubts about it. You have to show it is not made of cheese, or at least show that an alternative hypothesis is more consistent with all the best data.

The question is not about Mann. The question is about data interpretation. AGW-deniers say they want to talk about the science, but your focus is on Mann instead of the more recent reconstructions, and of course you want to talk about Gore. If it’s about science and not personalities, then I need to see a statistically superior reconstruction to the hockeysticks.

One example: Let’s say I’m blind, and 10 people tell me that Gore weighs between 200-250 lbs. If you come along saying that their estimation method is wrong, I’m going to ask how wrong it is. I think that’s a good analogy for where things stand. If you also say that he’s not 200-250 lbs, I’m going to ask what your estimates are, and if you say you don’t have an estimate, I’m probably going to stick with my best guess (based on the estimates I already received).

There is a middle ground where one can show a theory to be wrong but at the same time no viable alternative has yet to come forth. That was the problem with plate tectonics. Sure scientists knew stationary contintents was not correct, but until plate tectonics came along (specifically magentic anomalies on the sea floor) there was no embracing of another alternative. Limbo was in place for a long time.

There are alternative reconstructions that do not show the hockey stick phenomena, but, instead of having an open mind and seeing if these reconstructions have merit, you guys reject them out right. You also reject the sources those references are in because of a bias that all “deniers” are funded by Big Oil. Blinders.

I ask again, as no one has yet admitted, is the hockey stick graph wrong or worse a fraud? Is your dogma so strong that you cannot even admit to this?

and allow me to disagree with you without calling my position dogmatic and telling me I can’t admit something. My position remains that the hockey stick will be wrong when a better, more robust, more statistically valid reconstruction showing a considerably different shape is generated. And hopefully at that point we’ll also know how wrong it is so that work based on it can be re-evaluated.

Plate tectonics – yeah, there were a bunch of things that seemed at odds with stationary continents. I’m not as familiar with this as some, but I don’t think you’ve characterized it properly. It was a matter of which idea had more explanatory power for questions of the day and which idea raised too many other problems that couldn’t be resolved at the time. For that reason, many scientists assumed stationary continents in their work, and for many purposes that was accurate enough.

I asked for “better” reconstructions, not “other”. But you’ve decided to lump me in there with “you guys” and call me close-minded rather than providing something useful. It’s true, however, that I would be more receptive to a reconstruction published in a peer-reviewed journal that’s not Energy & Environment.

It really shows how desperate the AGW crowd is now, when they try so hard to defend the Hockey Stick.
Arguably the most embarrassing episode of Fraud in the whole sad movement.

Anyway, here is some reality just to even out the mythology.

New Research Indicates Climate Similar to the 1800s Within the Next 15 Years: First Stage of Global Cooling Will Begin During 2008-2009

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/07/prweb1081014.htm

Excerpt:
New research findings released in the peer reviewed book “Global Warming – Global Cooling, Natural Cause Found,” links seven different types of recurring gravitational cycles as the cause for all 2200 global warming events during the past half million years, including the earth’s current warming cycle. It also links the cycles to a natural 50 percent increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide during the 10,000 year period leading up to the peak of all recurring 116,000 year mega global warming cycles. Meteorologist and climate researcher David Dilley of Global Weather Oscillations http://www.globalweathercycles.com, says the gravitational cycles act like a magnet by pulling the atmosphere’s high pressure systems northward or southward by as much as 3 or 4 degrees of latitude from their normal seasonal positions. As the current gravitational cycle declines, global temperatures will begin cooling during 2008-09 with dramatic global cooling by 2023.

Why not apply some ‘skepticism’ to the results of a ‘peer-reviewed book’? At least it makes some predictions, though. Very good! But I’m curious, how many non-CO2 hypotheses does this rule out: solar, ocean overturning, cosmic rays, …?

This post along with many many others are intended to show that the climate is a complex beast with many and varied controls and drivers.
The point is: assuming that Man made CO2 is the major driver or even “a” major infleuence is gross hubris.

It doesn’t mean that the topic they’re addressing is overly complex. I could write all kinds of incorrect crap about gravity … it doesn’t mean that people who know better can’t make reliable predictions about orbits. The way it works is this: hypotheses that explain things better than others will replace the others; the strength of the best hypothesis is not diminished if you add to a list of poorly performing hypotheses. Evolution is not weaker because FSM was added to other religious explanations as competing ideas.

There are specific equations about orbital motion. What specific equations are there about climate? None. That’s why they build these expensive computers to attempt to model reality. And they are NEVER right. They are ASSUMPTIONS and APPROXIMATIONS, not hard factual outcomes. What they are are predictions that are not predicing anything the planet is actually doing!

Alright, JR, tell me what a ‘specific’ equation is. Then show me some that are used for prediting the movements of the heavens. (Note that dark matter was used to explain cases where those equations predict something that’s not observed. If it was climate science, I suspect you’d call it a fudge/correction factor. I believe dark matter is real, but if a similar thing occurred in climate science, how would you respond to it?) Anyway, you supply some equations that meet your criterion of being ‘specific’ and I’ll try to find some analogs in climate science; then we’ll evaluate the reliability of your assertion that there are no specific equations about climate.
On the other hand, if all you’re trying to say is that climate prediction is more complex than orbital prediction, then I’ll save you the effort and agree that it is. That wouldn’t subtract from my analogy, though. BTW, even orbital models are simplifications that rely on assumptions to yield approximations – no need to capitalize.

Punishers of the Poor
Some politicians like higher energy prices because it forces Americans to use less energy and adopt a lower standard of living – just what environmental extremists want. But high prices hit the poor hardest. For many families, affordable energy can mean the difference between life and death.
The six politicians who earned top honors as the “worst of the worst” in supporting policies that keep energy prices high and disproportionately hurt low-income families are these:
 Joker: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
 Joker: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
 Ace of Spades: U.S. Senator Dick Durbin
 Ace of Diamonds: U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer
 Ace of Clubs: U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA)
 Ace of Hearts: U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) http://www.stopwaronpoor.org/

“The alarmists and media have been frustrated in their efforts to report global warming evidence as nature has refused to cooperate. Temperatures have been declining for going on 7 years (accelerated this year) even as CO2 increased 3.5%.”

Wive: Dear, there was a nasty accident on the highway yesterday, a transport truck struck several cars and killed several people. I saw it on the news. Don’t go to work today. I have a really bad feeling you will get killed in a car accident.

Husband: I have to go to work. I can’t not go to work on your feelings.

W: But the feeling is real strong, I really believe something bad is going to happen, you must stay home.

H: Look, honey, nothing’s going to happen. Nothing’s happened in the last 15 years I’ve driven to work, and nothing is going to happen for the next 15 years. Everything is going to be fine.

W: And what if you are wrong?

So the question becomes. Who has the onus to make their case and proved evidence? The wife or the husband?

This is exactly the same issue with AGW. Those who are asking what if I’m wrong is the wife here. Thus the onus is on YOU to provide evidence of the dire consequences of AGW. If I’m going to be wrong, it needs to be wrong on something that WILLHAPPEN, not something that MIGHT happen. All life is riddled with MIGHT happens every day. We never question if we are wrong about those.

Gary: I see you visit Icecap every day. Nice. I tried to post that link but got the dreaded “service unavailable” error.

But you left out the fact that the wife knows her husband is a really bad driver based on her own experience, and that he has been drinking booze all night, based on the evidence of his breath and the empty bottles all over the place. Cherry picking again!

That’s an assumption I never put in the storyline, so why did you add it? What justification do you have to alter my story? None, you are rewiting my story so that your dogma fits the story line. Very typical.

Fact, is, he does not drink and has a perfect driving record. Now what?

Recently, Steven Goddard writing for The Register backed off his earlier claim that the Arctic ice data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) were erroneous and that there was no massive loss of ice. However, there are still unanswered doubts over the NSIDC data, and diagrams from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), which Goddard now claim to be correct.

So what really happened that led Goddard to issue his retraction? After a few minutes of painstaking research, peer review, and ponies, we at the International Journal of Inactivism have uncovered the True Story behind Goddard’s renouncement! Here it is.

It does not matter if the ice is melting or not. We humans are all f’d because we will destroy ourselves. If not by Global Warming then by NUKES. Lets face it. We are the worse creatures on this planet and if I could I would remove that element from existence. HUMANS must die to save this planet.!

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.